What is your single favourite novel?

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Well-Known Member

Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky springs to mind. I feel it is one if the landmark Sci fi novels of recent times with really thought provoking concepts.
The writing itself has done creative ideas. I won't spoil it at all but it is worth a read imo.

Be Idle, be cool, and everything will be okay.

The reason I chose The Hobbit, is that I have read it at least once a year since I was a kid and has appealed to me at each time I pick it up. One of the greatest fantasy story's of all times, it includes a Dragon as well.

This world is not my home

It's complicated because my candidates come from series and this book is not part of my "best series," but for a one book read: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Its brilliance is beyond compare. I loved it from the beginning --- Ender at school --- and it just took off from there Ender in Battle School is some of the best stuff in S.F. --- And the ending! I've never been gab struck in my life.

Well-Known Member

I thought about and came to a conclusion that I cannot tell you my favourite because I don't have one. […] But I can tell you the one that, I think, has had the most impact and influence in my life and love of fantasy and reading. I can tell you that book very easily.

But for me, that's a completely legitimate answer - for all the reasons you give.

Also, the idea is for Chroners to post their favourite book - not necessarily what they consider to be "The Best". This is a more personal choice; someone could come back with something by Barbara Cartland and it would be legitimate if it had a particular meaning for them.

Perhaps, but there's a good reason for that; it's a damn good book and as such many people would rank it highly (if not favourite as such) making it 'obvious'. I'm sure we'll see plenty of The Hobbit and LOTR in this thread and I'm equally sure those Chroners will have read many, many books and still those two would stand out among the rest.

Happy Easter!

@Matteo Good topic. But there's a rule that I cannot make a list?!?! Okay... how about if I just type out my thoughts as I go through the process of elimination... or maybe the sequence of favorites throughout my life? I'll come up with my all time favorite... but my interests in stories has changed through experience and age.

James and the Giant Peach was the first fiction that fired my imagination, but it was soon bested by Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Which was beaten by A Horse and his Boy and Danny, the Champion of the World. I thought that Roald Dahl and C.S. Lewis were the greatest. The Hobbit was next, but when my babysitter told me about Frodo, Gollum, and the One Ring... I found my next love, The Lord of the Rings. After that, I discovered Conan (Queen of the Black Coast and Beyond the Black River are my faves), John Carter (I'll always love the first five Barsoom stories), and the Tolkien imitation... The Sword of Shanarra. I must mention that one of my favorite stories was forced upon me in school... The Count of Monte Cristo. The next epic that really fired me up was Shogun. I looked for more political adventures and found The Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War, and The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth. Politics, history, and adventure (plus patriotism, romance, family, redemption, and God) all came together in Les Miserables. The next favorite novel was Lonesome Dove (selected by Bick as his (current) fave). And then George Martin released A Game of Thrones. He combined all my favorite aspects of Dahl, Tolkien, Howard, Hugo, Dumas, Forsyth, and Clavell... AGOT and A Storm of Swords are the two best in that series. Ilium by Dan Simmons is phenomenal. Currently, Joe Abercrombie revs my engine with his stories of the Circle of the World... maybe The Heroes is my favorite of them.

So that is a sequential list of favorites... A Darkness at Sethanon, The Belgariad, Red Storm Rising, The Bourne Identity, Dragonflight, Pirate Freedom, The Name of the Wind, The Black Cauldron, Watership Down, Peace Child, The Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer, The Three Musketeers, All Creatures Great and Small, and Hearts in Atlantis did not even get considered as faves.

To finally come to the point... my deepest and most continual love is given to The Lord of the Rings.

Also, thanks for making this thread about a "favorite" and not a "best" novel... I am not qualified to speak on that.

the dude abides

I've always chosen Catch-22 for this question. It had an enormous impact on me and has shaped a lot of my views on politics and society. It's also darkly funny and horrifying in equal measure. 1984 might get all the recognition, but for my money there is no book better than Catch-22 at summarizing our times and how dehumanizing our modern society truly is.

Man of Artistic Fingers

Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky. It was the first sci-fi novel I remember reading, given to me by my older brother. If I picked it up and read it today, I'm sure it would be dated and probably simplistic. But it started me on a wondrous reading journey.

It was Robert Heinlein that got me hooked on SF. I can't remember the title, but it sounds like the one you mentioned. The book I read, the inhabitants of a space ship forgot that were space travelers. The ship became divided into two levels with one level occupied by humans the other by mutants and a common expression was "I kronk".

Well-Known Member

It was Robert Heinlein that got me hooked on SF. I can't remember the title, but it sounds like the one you mentioned. The book I read, the inhabitants of a space ship forgot that were space travelers. The ship became divided into two levels with one level occupied by humans the other by mutants and a common expression was "I kronk".